CBS Commits To New Shows, Grazer/Howard Join NBC For 9/11 Project, CSI: NY To Air Tonight

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This may not erase the bad memories of “Bob Patterson” or discussion of the “Seinfeld Curse,” but Jason Alexander’s latest sitcom venture seems set to make it through at least one season. CBS has ordered up the back nine for “Listen Up,” the Monday comedy starring the “Seinfeld” veteran, while also boosting the fortunes of Wednesday laffer “Center of the Universe.”

Airing on Mondays in the plum slot between “Still Standing” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “Listen Up” has averaged 10.21 million viewers through its first seven airings this fall. That’s down slightly from the 10.54 million viewers drawn to its lead-in and down significantly from the 12.63 million viewers that “Still Standing” averaged in the same slot last season.

Still, CBS is confident enough in the critically savaged “Listen Up” to order a full season.

As bad as the reviews for “Listen Up” were, “Center of the Universe,” which stars such comedy veterans as John Goodman, Jean Smart and Ed Asner, received even worse reviews after CBS repeated delayed the show’s premiere.

However, “Center of the Universe” hasn’t been a ratings disaster, averaging 9.95 million viewers in its first two weeks and increasing that total for its third episode. CBS still has to be somewhat concerned with the fact that the 10 p.m. ET drama “CSI: NY” has suffered since “Universe” replaced “CSI” reruns as its lead-in.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS has asked for at least two addition episodes of “Universe,” as well as six more scripts.

Imagine TV principals Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and David Nevins are set to join the producing team for NBC’s recently announced miniseries on the events leading up to 9/11.

The deal is in its final stages, the Hollywood trade papers say, to bring Imagine TV on as a producer of the eight-hour series. NBC sibling NBC Universal TV Studio is also involved, and 20th Century Fox TV, where Imagine has an overall deal, is likely to come aboard as well.

The limited series, which NBC announced last month, will be based on the federal 9/11 Commission’s findings. In book form, the report has become a bestseller. ABC is also working on a project based on the report.

Graham Yost, the creator of “Boomtown” and a writer on HBO’s World War II epic “Band of Brothers,” is writing the miniseries and will executive produce with Howard, Grazer and Nevins. Howard and Grazer previously worked with Yost on the HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon.”
The 9/11 project will focus on the events that led up to the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, including failures of the U.S. intelligence system and, NBC says, “the many heroes” who helped prevent the attacks from being even worse than they were.

No start date has been set, but Yost has said he expects to take a considerable amount of time doing research before writing the script.

After a week of rumors, innuendo and false information, Yasser Arafat finally died on Wednesday (Nov. 10) night. CBS viewers on the East Coast know all about Arafat’s death, because the network cut into regular programming for a retrospective on the deceased Palestinian president. What those viewers don’t know, however, is what happened at the end of Wednesday’s “CSI: NY.”

CBS is making amends to frustrated viewers who are calling the preemption the Middle East/procedural drama equivalent of the notorious “Heidi” game, where a movie about the Alpine lass cut into the thrilling end of an NFL game.

The episode of “CSI: NY,” titled “Outside Man,” will reair on Friday night at 10 p.m. ET in the place of an episode of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” which was already scheduled to air instead of the soon-to-be-cancelled freshman drama “dr. vegas.”

In the episode, Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) and Aiden (Vanessa Ferlito) investigate a multiple homicide at a restaurant, but for many viewers, the final five minutes vanished when CBS interrupted with the news of Arafat’s death. CBS was the only network to cut in, as other channels used crawl text to inform viewers and as a promo for the 11 p.m. news period which is so crucial for affiliates.

In a statement to media services, CBS apologized both to viewers and to the local news programs they scooped.

“An overly aggressive CBS News producer jumped the gun with a report that should have been offered to local stations for their late news,” the statement reads. “We sincerely regret the error.”

Credit: Zap2It

Murtz Jaffer is the world's foremost reality television expert and was the host of Reality Obsessed which aired on the TVTropolis and Global Reality Channels in Canada. He has professional writing experience at the Toronto Sun, National Post, TV Guide Canada, TOROMagazine.com and was a former producer at Entertainment Tonight Canada. He was also the editor at Weekendtrips.com.